My World

• A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship and Musical Theatre
• Marc Acuito
• 288 pages
• ISBN: 0747576580

A novel I picked up for £3 from Fopp when I was down in Bath. I bought it 'cos it was cheap and just wanted something to read whilst I had some time to kill on a rainy afternoon.

I wasn't really expecting much, but somehow I seem to have demolished the 300-odd pages in less than a week. It isn't a book that's going to change the world, or even change anybody's life, but it's quite fun, and doesn't suffer in the way `teen coming of age' movies do, in that they left the sex and drugs in.

To be critical, the book is annoyingly American, not so much in the cultural sense (which is obviously part of the book) but in the language of the book itself.

Probably wouldn't pay more than £3 for it, or even buy other books by the same author, but I can think of a few people who'd enjoy it as a light holiday read.

Rating: 2/5

• Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon
• 113 min, 15, Broadway

This is another film that proves my point about how much better it is to see a film without having been exposed to excessive amounts of publicity, previews and trailers.

Crash is a film that it's very hard to explain what happens, but in general its an exploration of stereotypes, particularly racial stereotypes, but also looks at the idea of "good" and "bad". Refreshingly, the film avoids many of the Hollywood clichès, and it's nice to see Sandra Bullock doing something a bit different. It was also nice to see a film that wasn't just an ego trip for a big name, but instead a serious of well developed characters that played second fiddle to the film itself.

Rating:3.5/5